Lucas Cranach the Elder

Lucas Cranach the Elder is instantly recognisable: slender, pale nudes with small heads, high waists and knowing smiles, set against dark backgrounds or neat German landscapes. He painted Adam and Eve, Venus and Lucretia many times, and his portraits of princes and reformers are just as distinctive.

He was born in Kronach in Franconia around 1472 and from about 1505 served as court painter to the Electors of Saxony in Wittenberg, a post he held for decades. He ran a large and efficient workshop and was a close friend of Martin Luther, whose image he painted repeatedly. His portraits did much to fix the look of the Protestant Reformation. His son Lucas Cranach the Younger carried on the workshop.

His Adam and Eve pictures, with the apple tree, the snake and the animals around them, are among his best known works. He died in Weimar in 1553.